This really might be the dumbest, most ill-conceived and poorly written Daily Caller opinion piece ever, which, lordamercy, is saying something:
Why, to serve as civilizing hose-bags and poop out babies, of course! Well, at the very least, the column puts paid to any notion that the GOP’s “woman problem” will end when dinosaurs like Foster Friess finally lumber into the tar pit.
[X-POSTED at Rumproast]
harlana
Santorum says, “stop picking on my billionaire! it’s not his fault he grew up listening to wax cylinders!”
Villago Delenda Est
Since this guy is yet another pretty obvious GOP closet case, I’m not surprising he’d ask such an incredibly stupid question. Sort of like Jon Kyl and his objections to medical insurance covering ladyparts.
A couple of guys who were obviously conceived in petri dishes, carried to term in surrogate mothers (possibly women in prison who had no choice in the matter), then raised in a Lebensborn creche by men in SS uniforms.
MattF
It was just such a surprise that Santorum’s patron turns out to be an old white misogynistic asshole. And lookee heere, the Sun rises in the east! Every day!
harlana
“what do women want?”
why don’t you fucking ask them?
Yevgraf
His visage and whole mien scream “I like show tunes, interior decorating, poodles and strong, hairy men, but I am like totally not gay” to me, but what do I know…
cathyx
@harlana: Because then they’ll talk about their feelings, going on and on, blah, blah, blah.
Villago Delenda Est
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’m not surprised he’d ask such…
Gosh, it’s early, and I do need coffee. I think I’ll just go back to bed for now, it’s going to be another long day of GOP stupidity, I need more Zs to face it, methinks…
harlana
OT, and apologies if this has been posted before: CPAC’rs cruising for gay sex in DC on Craigstlist
Clark Stooksbury
The purpose of lifting the left’s Potemkin skirts is not to score tits for tats. Anyone serious about thinking through the role of women in today’s civilization is doing worthless work unless they take the controversies on the right hand in hand with the unsuccessfully suppressed tensions on the opposite side of the spectrum, where disagreements far more volatile in their profundity roil respectable liberalism.
I think that English is his second language, and perhaps Earth is his second planet.
Linda Featheringill
I read the article. The most offensive part was the main question: “What are women for?”
Why in the bloody hell should we be fucking for anything?
Unless women are commodities.
It is to barf.
Villago Delenda Est
@Clark Stooksbury:
His home planet is probably Pakled, from what I can tall. The Pakled in the universe that’s big on showtunes. (h/t Yevgraf)
MattF
@Clark Stooksbury: Oh, dear– ‘tits for tats’ is quotable, even though one can only wonder what he actually meant. Looks like I’m going to have to read it.
Yevgraf
Goddamn. I just waded into the little creep’s cesspool. This stupid trend of “the 1st Amendment is about propping up institutional power at the expense of the individual” is on stero!ds there. Somehow, the government’s refusal to allow dogma to turn into law is an impingement on liberty.
When the revolution comes, I want to supervise the gulags and torture regimes.
harlana
my favorite: “The Patriot With a Daddy Complex”
Cassidy
I’m waiting for the “it was satire” update.
harlana
when men do not know when to stfu
have we informed you fuckers you’re going to regret this yet? ok, we’ll wait until the GE, that’s fine – i like the idea of clobbering you from behind anyways
Clark Stooksbury
He makes Ben Shapiro seem profound.
JPL
After reading it twice, I came to the conclusion that James Poulos is being paid per word.
Egg Berry
@MattF:
I thought conservatives weren’t into pr0n.
capt
Obviously, any man knows what is best for women. You know they have hormones and they menstruate so the little dears get all emotional and stuff. (/snark)
Peter
“the woman question”? Really? Has anybody used that construction since the 19th century?
Egg Berry
@Clark Stooksbury:
I knew about Potemkin villages, but i was unaware they had launched a line of evening wear.
Does this Potemkin skirt make my butt look fat?
Cassidy
I get rewarded quite well for being a liberal male, thank you.
Egg Berry
Ok, i got off the boat and attempted to read it. Quite possibly the most densely tossed bunch of pseudo-academic word salad hemming and hawing I’ve read in eons.
Linda Featheringill
@Egg Berry: #22
:-)
Maybe you’re right. Maybe the guy is kind of funny.
jibeaux
You just know ol’ Foster Friess has told that joke a hundred times down at the country club and gotten big laughs from his old white billionaire golf buddies every time, and cannot for the life of him figure out what the fuss is about.
Villago Delenda Est
@Linda Featheringill:
Funny in the “my Uncle Pat the parish priest who has been a parish priest all over the continent” sort of way, perhaps…
Stacy
I could make neither heads nor tales of the article nor tits for tats.
harlana
@Cassidy: considering their deep-seated resentment towards women, it stands to reason that conservative males are either not getting enough from women or they are just really, really disappointed about the equipment they are forced to work with.
currants
Funny–just came across this: “Is my life given me for nothing but to get children and work to bring them up?” D.H.Lawrence.
Answer, according to shockingly higher number of people than we might imagine: yes.
arguingwithsignposts
It’s two wetsuits and dildos all the way down!
Cassidy
@harlana: They’re jealous. A woman can pull a dude anytime she gets the inclination. They have to go on Craigslist and beg for someone discreet.
Rathskeller
I am reminded of C-level academics trying to write postmodern criticism in the 1980s. Many trips to the thesaurus later, they pound out something where no one has any fucking idea of what the original point was intended to be. They read Foucault and think that the point is to be unintelligible. This guy has gone through similar confusion with some right-wing philosopher manqué, and drawn the same conclusion.
WereBear
@harlana: Myself, I see them as boiling pits of resentment seeking an outlet.
4tehlulz
@Peter: Do you want me to Godwin?
jibeaux
I bet Foster Friess also made a phone call along these lines:
Rih, buddy, I’m so sorry. Liberal media, they’re always distorting. But look, I’ve got a great idea to get the gals back. Just pick Sarah Palin for your VP! Unless…wait a minute, hold on, I’ve got an even better idea! You know any conservative colored gals?
4tehlulz
BTW does anyone know of a good way to put myself into a coma for…say…10 months? I don’t think I want to be awake for the rest of this campaign.
Emma
@Clark Stooksbury: I think that English is his second language, and perhaps Earth is his second planet.
I vote for the second. Even if he were actually using “for” to mean “in favor of” the text is an unspeakable mess that no true Earthling could possibly produce, even after a tequila binge and a concussion.
MattF
@4tehlulz: You’re saying this isn’t all a drug-induced dream. I think I’m upset now.
gelfling545
What are women FOR? Well,sir, if they have to be FOR anything they are For the same purpose as you only most of them are better at it.
DanielX
Consulting my personal dictionary…yes, over the definition of shithead there is indeed a picture of James Poulos. That could and probably will change tomorrow; yesterday it was C. Todd Allen.
Some Guy
As I said in a previous post las night: “Slack-jawed troglodyte with a thesaurus.”
Melkel
I’m from a little European country, so English is not my first language. So far, I was pretty confident I could read and comprehend almost anything.
This guy’s article just crushed me, now I’m laying on the floor in fetal position questioning my brain’s function. What was it all about? What was the point of the whole “opinion”? I really do not know. America’s brightest has won again!
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Jerks like this will still be with us when the Friess generation dies off. However, given that the Friess types are the ones funding wingnut welfare, the recipients may finally find out how the other half live when the Big Daddy Friess types have gone.
rikryah
shrug
this is who they are
JPL
Is the use of acid back in vogue, also,too.
btw Mediate just put up an article about the clown. Unfortunately, Poulos will receive far to many links.
4tehlulz
@MattF: If you can convince me that were in global K-hole, go for it; that’s better than the horrible, horrible alternative.
amk
@jibeaux:
condy rice ? michele malkin ?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@rikryah: If this is who they are, then they deserve to be ridiculed.
Some Guy
TPM has an item up about what Rethugs will run on with a better economy. Santrorum and Rush Limbaugh are saying go all in on the culture war:
“Something tells me, that if the upcoming election could be decided on social issues, the Republicans could win that in a landslide, because we are on the right side of the culture war,” Limbaugh told listeners on Thursday. “The problem is, we’re scared to death of it. The Republican establishment wants no part of it.”
Perseverative means to reiterate the same response even thought the prompt has changed. The person is locked in a cycle. Well, the Republicans really have reached a fully perseverative state. Molly Ivins once referred to this in regard to tax cuts: tax cuts when its raining, tax cuts when its shining.
They have no ideas, only mantras, and better yet, people like Limbaugh think they are on the winning side of those issues. Perseverative and deeply deluded.
Schlemizel
Jimmy Dugan: Ballplayers!? I don’t have ballplayers, I’ve got girls. Girls are what you sleep with after the game, not, not what you coach during the game.
sigh – its just so tiring to go over the same ground with these morans. Its not that they are not capable of learning its that they refuse to learn. The see growth and learning as a bad thing.
jon
Amazing use of framing the argument. As a rhetorical device, it succinctly placed the debate of women’s status directly to the obvious conclusion that his position is extremely sexist.
If only more Republicans could be this direct in their odiousness.
Linda Featheringill
@Some Guy:
Rush probably listens only to himself and is therefore out of touch with earthlings.
Egg Berry
You know who I blame for this? Genesis 2.
suzanne
What are women for?
Jesus Hussein Christ.
You know, from time to time, something will occur that makes me feel like we just might be making progress.
Usually, that “something” is when an old white Republican man dies.
aspasia
Sandra Day O’Connor is a liberal?
Patricia Kayden
@Some Guy:
Cross my fingers and hope to die that it becomes all about “the gays” and “the colored folk” and keeping the gals in check. AWESOME.
Some Guy
@Patricia Kayden: True. “Let’s see, can you win an election without women and minority voters? No. Yeah, well, let’s tell them all to go jump in a lake anyway. And make more God damn babies (except the brown ones).”
lacp
His question is so eye-bleedingly stupid and repulsively smug that the only answer I can think of is the classic, “if you have to ask, you’ll never know.”
Hoodie
@Clark Stooksbury:
I’m glad to see he gets enough about female anatomy to know you don’t score tits by lifting skirts.
Josie
I read the first page, thought WTF and wasn’t even tempted to click on page number two. What illegible bullshit.
gogol's wife
I only got out of the boat because I mistook “Daily Caller” for “Daily Beast.” God, I wish I hadn’t read that.
ericblair
@Some Guy:
Well, Rushbo’s job is to get bucks from dragging in listeners, not by winning elections. I doubt he gives much of a shit in any real-world sense whether this is good or bad for the GOP’s chances, and the goopers’ doing well is probably bad for business for him. He’s all about telling the angry mob what they want to hear.
Paul in KY
@Egg Berry: It doesn’t make it look fat, but unfortunately it is still fat ;-)
Paul in KY
@Hoodie: Unless they’re wearing em wrong or you misdiagnosed some unfortunate flabbage as ‘tits’.
geg6
No fucking way I’m clicking on that. I’ve already been complaining in the thread above that I’m afraid I’m going to have a major medical emergency from exposure to these people.
And if this asshole doesn’t have a clue as to what women are for, then I think some of us women need to school him on that. Vigorously. But not in the way he might have wished.
j
That aspirin joke was in Playboy’s joke section (on the back of the centerfold) in the mid-sixties. I remember reading it when I was in grade school. It wasn’t all that funny back then, either.
sb
If I got a composition this poorly written from one of my students, I’d cry. No lie, I’d break down sobbing, crawl up in the fetal position and just sob.
GregB
Churches are people my friends.
Can't Be Bothered
The most offensive thing about this is the writing. It’s the writing equivalent of santorum… just a frothy mixture of “smart guy words” incoherently sloshing around on the page.
Boots Day
What are men for?
Cassidy
Reaching the top shelf.
Betty Cracker
@Cassidy: I would say mowing the lawn. But I’m tall…
Linda Featheringill
@Cassidy:
What are men for?
LOL! As a short person, I can relate to that. :-)
Linda Featheringill
I would like to add that I don’t see any reason why men have to be for anything, any more than women.
We is. End of argument.
Boots Day
I’m 5’7, so I guess it’s a good thing that I’m willing to mow the lawn.
jibeaux
Opening jars. Mousetrap disposal. Throwing kids in the air. Definitely mowing the lawn, although I wouldn’t mind sometimes mowing the lawn if I could start the damn thing. Aerating and putting down crabgrass preventer. Actually, they have a lot of uses.
Redshift
What? We’ve gotten this far without anyone speculating about his column being called the “bottom” line?
ETA: Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
loretta
@Stacy:
Me neither. I was buried in bullshit, suffocating in solopisms, and failing to find a thread of logic. I simply could not get through the piece, getting lost in the maze of incoherence. I don’t care if someone can’t spell perfectly, or even if their ideas are horrendous, but if they are articulate and coherent, well, I can at least respect the work. But this? Ugggh. Unreadable.
JR
@4tehlulz: Perhaps read too much Foucault? Or even Dickens! who was certainly paid by the word.
Princess
@Clark Stooksbury: It was precisely at this point in the article that I decided life was not long enough for me to waste part of it disentangling this drivel.
FlipYrWhig
He’s doing the bit about how if women are just like men they’ll give up their valuable feminine qualities, like sensitivity, nurture, and voluptuousness.
Mary Wollstonecraft was annoyed at that kind of condescension in 1792.
Paul in KY
@Redshift: I thought about that, but figured it was a low-hanging fruit, so I didn’t bother…
fraught
Wow. I tried to read it at my usual New York Review of Books speed which usually gets me through pretty literate, well written stuff. At the end of page one I realized I hadn’t a clue what he had said. Slowed down for page two and ended up completely baffled as to what the fuck he had written about. Was that even in English? What a pretentious prick to even try to write an article with that title.
divF
@Egg Berry: Fortunately, I had just swallowed a mouthful of coffee before seeing this, otherwise I would have had to send my laptop into the shop for the third time this month.
dr. luba
I’m not sure what men are for, but I think is was conclusively proven in 1995 that men are not cost effective.
(Linking not working for me. So this: http://www.amazon.com/Men-Are-Not-Cost-Effective-America/dp/0060950986 )
opie jeanne
@Linda Featheringill: mr opie jeanne is short, so he’s there to kill the spiders.
(I can do it if I have to, I just prefer to have someone else do it.)
Origuy
There used to be a game played with Google where you would enter two words in quotes and try to get exactly one web page. Thinking “Potemkin skirts” was some reference that none of us got, I tried it. The only pages I got were this clown’s and the ones quoting him, including Balloon Juice.
Hungry Joe
When Santorum defended the Inquisition I was convinced that the wingnut had peaked, but the curve continues to trend upward. Do you suppose there’s some kind of Wingnut Barrier — a physical law that expresses itself as You Can Get This Crazy, But No Crazier? Or is the sky indeed the limit?
Older
@Cassidy: IOW, “men” = “footstool”.
Older
On a more serious note:
What is the purpose of WOMEN? Ask rather, what is the purpose of MEN?
The answer is, alas, obvious. The purpose of MEN is to provide a convenient (and sometimes enjoyable) way of redistributing the genetic material that women use in their important work of continuing the existence of the species.
If women do not need this service (as increasingly, they do not), the existence of MEN (or anyway, most men) becomes superfluous. Noticing this, MEN will of course fight against this trend, using whatever means, fair or foul, seem likely to them to prevail.
MEN, we’ve enjoyed knowing you (some of you anyway) and some of us will miss having you around, but really, we have enough people now, and if you insist on retaining your former purpose, adjustments will have to be made.
Lihtox
I didn’t understand the guy either, but it seems to me that conservatives like to put people in boxes: men hunt, women gather, men trade, women raise babies. For a political party that scoffs at evolution, it’s a very animalistic view of humanity.
ReflectedSky
Tried to read it. My goodness. I feel like I haven’t commented enough on this site to indulge in any pungent snark or satire (although the desire to talk about how the whole piece was floating in santorum is strong, despite the lack of originality in the reference.)
Taking this Internet time machine back several centuries is interesting, to say the least. But now I feel like I need a nice, hot, modern shower.
So men join the conservative movement because of their repressed homosexuality? Is there any OTHER reason to join? A bunch of CPAC guys went to a Pick Up Artist seminar, right? That stuff is only supposed to work on women because our very special, unique weaknesses. So presumably the guys all sucking up the knowledge and skills from the master actually do want to get laid by girls. So it’s men afraid of their homosexuality and hetero guys with anger issues and terrible social skills?
I really don’t see how the noise machine can keep a majority of Americans from recoiling at this. It’s just so PATHETIC. It really does look like it will be a battle over voting access.
I would like to say, I love men. Men are extremely entertaining. I’d keep you all around just for the fun of it. So when we’re standing in the rubble of civilization, remember guys — I’ll take care of you.
TuiMel
@Josie:
Ditto